-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- David Bill is n't annoyed when Twitter gets so bogged down with traffic that he ca n't post a message .

Twitter 's `` fail whale , '' which appears when the site is overrun , is so popular it 's on T-shirts and even tattoos .

That 's because in the moment when frustration would hit , he 's greeted on the popular Web site by a cartoonish image he loves : a giant whale being lifted out of an ocean by a small flock of tweeting birds .

The icon -- which Twitter users call it the `` fail whale '' because the creature appears only when the site has failed to load -- has gained a cult following as the social media site grows at breakneck pace .

The conversational Web site , which lets users post 140-character microblogs , saw a 1,374 percent jump in unique visitors between February 2008 and February this year , up to 7 million from only 475,000 , according to Nielsen NetView .

By comparison , Facebook grew 228 percent , to 65.7 million users , during the same period .

With all of those new Twitterers , fail whale sightings and site crashes seem more frequent .

Bill -LRB- mr_bill on Twitter -RRB- and other fail-whale followers are n't bothered , though .

The 36-year-old San Franciscan has organized parties in honor of the whale . The most recent , held in California in February , was attended by more than 300 people , including Yiying Lu , the artist in Australia who created the image .

Bill says the whale represents a contrarian philosophy .

`` It 's sort of an adorable whale but also this thing that represents the Herculean tasks that we sometimes go about from day to day , '' he said .

`` We 're all trying to do a lot of things that seem pretty impossible , '' Bill said . `` It 's nice to identify something positive with those failures . ''

Not every Twitterer is sympathetic to the site 's troubles , though .

Some users say Twitter has outgrown its core audience and is irrelevant to the technophiles who made it popular in the first place . Others are annoyed by the flood of spammers and profiteers who now use the site 's popularity to make a buck .

Celebrities and members of Congress have been jumping onto the site in recent months , adding to the site 's mainstream popularity and , some users say , causing glitches in the system .

`` I keep getting the fail whale . Twitter got too popular too quickly . I blame Shaq , '' wrote Jessica Roy , a 21-year-old New York University student who goes by suchamessica on Twitter .

Basketball player Shaquille O'Neal , or THE_REAL_SHAQ , has more than 470,000 followers on the site .

Nova Spivack , a blogger whose article `` Can Twitter Survive What is About to Happen to It ? '' has been passed around the site , said a rift is developing between Twitter 's original `` in crowd '' and its newer , more mainstream users .

Early adopters find many of the new users annoying , he said .

`` A lot of people come in , and they take that ` What are you doing ? ' question literally , and so they put very inane things on Twitter , '' he said . iReport.com : How do you feel about tweets and status updates ?

The site used to feel `` insulated '' from the mainstream , and now it does n't , he said .

But for all the complaints , there seem to be just as many people who are almost excited about Twitter 's growing pains .

It is inevitable that a Web site seeing Twitter-style growth would face some glitches and a backlash from early adopters , said Laura Fitton , a consultant and co-author of the book `` Twitter for Dummies . ''

`` There 's going to be all kinds of people using it all kinds of different ways , '' she said . `` The purists can go pound rocks . ''

Major news such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the Hudson River plane landing has broken over Twitter , and that 's added to the site 's popularity , she said .

Amy Gahran , who writes on social media at contentious.com , said the backlash against Twitter stems from the fact that people are uncomfortable with change . Early users see new people coming to the site , and that creeps them out , but it should n't , she said .

`` Change is freaking good , '' she said . `` Roll with it . ''

As the site gets filled with fresh users , people are creating pieces of software to help Twitterers sort through the noise , Gahran said .

She said Twitter is popular because it mimics real-life conversation and because it 's easy to use . She also expects Twitter to expand , especially as people in developing countries use cell-phone text messages to communicate through the site .

`` People talk . That 's what we do , '' she said . `` We 're social creatures . We 're kind of wired for this . ''

Twitter says it is addressing breakdowns in that wired communication .

`` We have made amazing progress from a technical perspective as far as accommodating this rapid growth goes and will continue to improve system and subsystem performance moving forward , '' Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a statement to CNN .

Critter Gewlas of Cary , North Carolina , believes so much in the site 's ability to overcome adversity that he recently got a tattoo of the fail whale on his leg .

`` The site itself has suffered a few scrapes and bumps along the way , but for the most part , I definitely think it 's a good thing , '' said the 36-year-old .

The fail whale 's account on Twitter has more than 2,265 followers . A Facebook group dedicated to the whale has more than 4,400 members . The whale has spawned art and merchandise , from coffee mugs to baby clothes . A Current.com parody of the whale has spun around the Internet , too .

Bill , whose fail whale parties have featured an aquamarine martini in honor of the icon 's color , said the whale 's popularity comes from the idea that failures are worth celebrating and learning from .

Twitter will use that philosophy to continue to grow , he said .

`` Twitter is a powerful enough thing that it should succeed in a broad way , and I would like it to succeed in a broad way , '' he said .

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Twitter saw growth of more than 1,300 percent in the year up to February

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Its swift growth has caused a backlash among some of the site 's early users

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Other rally around the `` fail whale , '' an icon of the site 's shortcomings

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Site users host parties in honor of the whale ; one even has a tattoo of the image